Modification

The march of technology has made increasingly sophisticated media production devices financially and technically viable for the common consumer, which in turn has seen a boom of people not only commenting and speculating of trends in the media but actively creating their own alternatives.

This trend is occurring across the entire spectrum of popular culture but arguably the most prominent, or at least sophisticated contender is video game modification.

Developers are beginning to realise the power of the consumer as a potential resource pool. The cinderella story of this field is the popular FPS title Counter Strike, which was originally a mod for Valve's Half-Life, which became so popular that the Counter Strike licence was bought out and the team recruited. CS has since gone on to become one of the most succesful FPS games in history.

Not all mods are this aggressive, although a total conversion utilising the same engine / resources is possible, it is extremely difficult. Common mods are new weapons, character 'skins', textures, maps, etc. Some games are even released with complete development kits to encourage user development.

A popular mod for Half-Life 2 is Garry's Mod which creates a 'sandbox' environment utilising environments, resources, but more importantly the physics from the game. Almost anything you can think of is possible, as the potential to manipulate the characteristics and attributes of the various objects is almost unlimited. One significant example is Concerned, a webcomic utilising this technology to create the images (it is also hilarious and well worth a look if you are familiar with Half-Life.)